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[CadetMahoney]

Whenever I hear white flight I always think there some secret list of areas and schools showing the percentage of non-whites in the area.

Speaks volumes about whites when they have the power to pick up and move at whim for this to be "a thing".

 

[Slo]

This is not an easy problem to solve. While it sounds great to have low income housing in more affluent areas so that these children also have access to the good schools what ends up happening is the families with the higher incomes are mobile enough to leave that area once then ratio isn't quite up to their liking. They leave in droves, more people with lower incomes start moving in, and property values start to plummet. Now who is really hurt in that situation are the families who scratched and saved enough to afford that area when prices were high but aren't mobile enough to move once the neighborhood changes. They are stuck and now instead of their children going to one of the better high schools in the area it's now becoming overcrowded and mediocre. The children of those families don't want to raise their own kids in that area so they move away often taking their parents with them or just selling the home to another lower income family.

It happened in the case of my family and you can see the remnants of that exact scenario everywhere in Atlanta below I-20. The only areas that avoided it were the areas that set hard limits on the number of apartments that could be built in that area and set laws against renting to section 8 recipients.

I'm currently looking for a forever home with my wife to you raise our new family in and one of the things I'm looking for are apartment complexes, lower income housing, and what are the local ordinances pertaining to them. I want to avoid the situation that happened to my parents at all costs.

Thanks for this post. As someone who's considering building a house in nicer neighborhood, the last thing I'd want to see is a trailer house wheeled in next door to me. I can't afford to have my house value cut in half like that.

 

[Slo]

I don't like, but I also understand why they want it too. Someone touched on it already, but for that threshold group(Middle class, lower). It's a pure no-win situation and they will get the rough end of the stick every time. Rich people can up and move, lower-income can now move into a nicer area outside their means. It creates a void now passed onto that middle region that has to pick up the slack, deal with falling property values, same or raising taxes, and lesser quality schools. Basically now, driving them down to the lower class once again, which is where they escaped from.

I do believe they should be within their rights to reject lower income housing.

Nobody wants to say this out loud, but I agree with it.

 

[Random Painted HIghway]

Whenever I hear white flight I always think there some secret list of areas and schools showing the percentage of non-whites in the area.

Speaks volumes about whites when they have the power to pick up and move at whim for this to be "a thing".

Not sure that census data is secret, nor are public school demographics. also, "speaks volumes about whites". ? You say as if middle and upper class minorities aren't doing the same thing, hitting the road when the area begins to decline.

 

[Slo]

Not sure that census data is secret, nor are public school demographics. also, "speaks volumes about whites". ? You say as if middle and upper class minorities aren't doing the same thing, hitting the road when the area begins to decline.

It strikes me as a really narrow mental tightrope to walk when someone characterizes poverty (and low income housing) as a blight to which no one can reasonably be expected to escape from, then also villianize anyone who tries to flee from it.